Aggie overhaul: $104 million campus upgrade planned

Wednesday

Jan 31, 2018 at 5:33 PMJan 31, 2018 at 5:33 PM

Charles Winokoor Taunton Gazette Staff Reporter @cwinokoor

DIGHTON - Adele Sands says before stepping in last November as new superintendent of Bristol County Agricultural High School, she'd been informed that some of the buildings on campus were in rough shape.

But it wasn't until she got a close-up look that she realized the extent to which those buildings had become outdated, obsolete and crowded.

"I was shocked," she said.

In addition to cramped classrooms, heating systems relying on a single radiator ceiling unit running the length of corridors has meant that doors in some buildings are kept open in an attempt to capture heat.

Sands, 56, took the top job at Bristol Aggie, as it is commonly called, after having worked as director of student services at Tri-County Regional Vocational High School in Franklin.

She replaced now-retired former superintendent Steven Dempsey.

Sands says she was gratified with the Jan. 6 vote, taken at the school by members of the Bristol County Advisory Board, to proceed with a $104 million improvement project - one which would include construction of a modern facility for students enrolled in the school's natural resource management and large and small animal science programs.

Other changes resulting from the project - which first must be approved by the state legislature - would include relocating the cafeteria from Keith Hall into the new building and creating a more spacious dairy barn for the school's more than two dozen cows, which produce milk sold to Agri-Mark Cooperative and Cabot Creamery Cooperative.

It also would include infrastructure upgrades to Gilbert Hall, which is considered the school's primary classroom building.

Nearly half the $104 million is expected to be covered by the Massachusetts School Building Authority, according to the office of Taunton-based County Commissioners of Bristol County.

Sands said the multi-structure Bristol Aggie campus on Dighton's Center Street - which sits on former farm land that slopes upward from the west side of the Berkley-Dighton Bridge - has been on borrowed time in terms of accreditation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

NEASC, she said, dating back to 2015, has cited, but not yet penalized, Bristol Aggie for deficiencies related to seating capacity and physical size of classrooms, some of which have been functioning as a classroom/laboratory hybrid.

"It's a big issue," said Sands, who says it's been more than 10 years since any significant infrastructure project has been undertaken at the school - which was founded in 1914 and is one of just a handful of agricultural schools in Massachusetts.

She said she doesn't blame her predecessor Dempsey, who retired last year.

"It didn't happen when I walked in," said Sands, who says the school's board of trustees has been trying to develop an infrastructure improvement plan, in accordance with the Massachusetts School Building Authority, for a number of years.

If and when the project is realized, Sands said the current student body of about 460 will easily rise above 600.

"There's always been a waiting list" of students eager to attend, she said.

Sands says that sense of purpose - whether the field of study is arboriculture; landscape design and contracting; or agricultural mechanics/diesel technology - engenders a level of maturity not typical of the average high school student.

"We don't have to babysit them," she said.

"They respect it (the school) like a college campus, and the adults don't follow them around," Sands added. "They want to be here, and they're not going to jeopardize it by being knuckleheads."

As for that old cow barn - which would be rebuilt on an adjacent space where the "chicken coop" small-animal-science building sits - Sands said it's clean but far too cramped to provide proper indoor living quarters for the school's cow population.

"It's a nasty building," she said, noting that the barn's silos no longer are in working condition.

The Bristol County Advisory Board consists of a designated representative from each of the county's 20 municipalities. Mansfield Selectman Jess Aptowitz and Easton Selectman Dotti Fulginiti are their communities' representatives.

The cost of the project will be approximately $5000 per student per year and decreases in the second, third and fourth years, Fulginiti said. Easton currently has 5 students enrolled and Mansfield has three.

Of those 20, a total of 12 members showed up Jan. 6 to take a walking tour, in order to view conditions inside the buildings, and then vote on the measure whether to authorize commissioners to petition the legislature.

Ten of the 12 representatives including Aptowitz and Fulginiti voted in favor; North Attleboro was opposed and Freetown abstained from voting, according to Maria Gomes, administrator for the three-member county commission body.

"I toured the school and the buildings are in bad shape," Fulginiti said. "The laboratories are not up to standards and there are a host of issues that will be resolved.

"Agriculture has always been important to Easton," Fulginiti said. "We have several successful working farms and we have students that are interested in farming and environmental sciences. Right now there is a waiting list to be accepted into the program at Bristol County Agricultural School and the renovations will allow for increased enrollment."

"The facility is in pretty rough shape," Aptowitz said a Mansfield selectmen meeting on Jan. 3 where the board voted 4-0 to support the plan.

New Mansfield Town Manager Kevin Dumas, who previously served on the advisory board when he was Attleboro's mayor, said the project would increase enrollment and add new programs.

"There are two buildings in the dairy section with exposed pipes, no heat and technology from the 1940s. It needs to be upgraded," Dumas said. "It's something that cannot be put off."

Gomes said 51 percent of municipalities are required for a quorum and that a 26-percent approval, based on a weighted, representative value assigned each town and city, is needed for a motion to pass.

The vote this month, she said, easily surpassed the 26-percent threshold.

But two weeks after the vote, a letter from advisory board Chairman Joseph Pacheco said the commissioners and their executive board recommended that a second advisory board vote be taken, after it was determined there was a question regarding the validity of the quorum on Jan. 6.

Pacheco said it had been determined there was a possible conflict when considering a "strict interpretation" of a related state statute which "would imply that a town cannot designate an alternate to a board of selectmen member."

Lopes said the trigger for the decision to schedule a new vote on Thursday, Feb. 8 was a last-minute call the day of the first vote from Freetown Selectmen Chairman Robert Jose to his town administrator - who was at Bristol Aggie - informing him Jose would be unable to attend and advising him to assume the role as the town's designated representative.

Even though the town administrator abstained from voting, the simple fact that he was acting as a designee ultimately prompted the decision to hold a subsequent vote.

Pacheco, who was voted at the Jan. 6 hearing to be the advisory board's new chairman said all 20 municipal representatives and advisory board members had ample notice that a vote was to be taken that day.

"During my 11 years as a member of the advisory board," said Pacheco, a Raynham selectman who voted in favor of the project on behalf of his town. "I've prided myself on transparency."

"Every community," he said, "got notification. It wasn't a secret."

Pacheco said in addition to emails, a notice advertising the public hearing was published two weeks prior to the vote in both the Taunton Daily Gazette and The Herald News of Fall River, the latter of which has 56 students at Bristol Aggie.

Pacheco's comments were made in response to being informed of two emails sent on Jan. 3 to the Standard-Times of New Bedford by David Cressman, administrator for the town of Dartmouth.

Cressman, in one email, stated he'd just found out two days earlier from Berkley Town Administrator Alan Coutinho, who had been reminded by Berkley Selectman Gil Pontes, that a tour of the school would be given that Saturday followed by a vote.

Cressman, in his emails, complained of what he called "a certain lack of transparency."

Pacheco said the county government is responsible only for contacting and alerting advisory board members of upcoming public meetings, and is not responsible for organizing supplemental public hearings on behalf of its member municipalities.

"That's not how it's handled by county government," he said. "And if you don't show up, it's on you."

Pontes, who at the Jan. 6 meeting was voted as the advisory board's new executive member, acknowledged his town's nearly $800,000 debt obligation "will be difficult on the budget."

But Pontes said he voted in favor of the petition because of the important role Bristol Aggie plays in providing "the next generation of agricultural workers" and also so the school can expand enrollment.

"They haven't asked for anything substantial since 2005," he said.

Pontes said Berkley during the past year has received advance notice of all public hearings on the matter. He also complimented Gomes for being "absolutely fantastic" and "on top of her game."

Taunton Mayor Thomas Hoye said he voted for the Bristol Aggie improvement project, which would require the city to contribute $4.8 million.

"I don't love the process, but it's incumbent on us to participate," said Hoye, who has praised the school and its accomplishments throughout the years.

Aptowitiz and Fulginiti said they plan to attend the Feb. 8 meeting.

Sands, who calls her agricultural school "a treasure," said her "biggest concern" is that anyone involved in the voting, who has so far not done so, take the opportunity to tour the campus to see why the project is necessary.

"Call my office, and I'll personally give a tour. Whatever they need me to do I'll do," she said.